So, how do we stay safe in schools? Every day a student witnesses some kind of violence either it’s a fight or some commotion with a student and teacher. Does it get reported? Not to the public, but to the principal and the principal handle the disciplined action to the student. For school shooting, that’s another problem, every day there’s a school shooting or an incident. The school needs to have more drills, not just fire drills, but different scenarios of what could happen. You will never know it could happen to your school. The priority is the student safety not the performance of the school. If there are safe the performance of the school will be better.

In NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, a school in Southwestern High School in Indiana, the classroom doors are bullet-resistant, cameras are everywhere, and the Sheriff’s department — only 10 miles away — can track an intruder in real-time. The school is high tech. They have smoke bombs to confuse the intruder. It looks like a scene from a movie, but it is real life. The teachers have a panic button to alert the police and the school administration. They also have an emergency call box to alert the police.

In the classroom, they have red tape on the floor of where to go. The student topples the desk over and they used old thick books such as dictionaries to shield themselves from flying bullets. Or have a collection of old books to throw at an intruder. War and Peace the novel, put it to use.

Another solution is the whiteboard in the classroom if it is stuck to the wall just have a surfboard in the classroom. If the students are curious about the surfboard. Just tell them you like to go surfing, the students will tell you the beach is 500 miles away. They have lakes. The surfboard can stop a 9mm Glock. The AR-15 a semi-automatic rifle, no chance for the surfboard.

You need a bulletproof shield that consists of 40 layers of compressed Dyneema, a strong synthetic fiber, giving them the bullet-stopping power of steel while weighing significantly less. The same material that is used to skis and snowboard, if you have these materials in your house, keep them they are useful. Hardwire produces bulletproof backpack inserts, whiteboards, and adhesive doors.

There’s a company called Elite Sterling Security LLC (www.elitesterlingsecurity.com) they provide body armor for grade school to high school and other body armor for adults too. It’s a USA based company in Denver, Colorado. Please check out their site.